To say this little kid has my heart is a bit of an understatement. Sometimes I don’t realize how much I’m affected by her wellbeing and safety until something happens, she gets hurt or sick and I quickly realize how dependant she is on me and how much what I do has an impact on her. She’s been a bit under the weather lately and woke up crying the other night, her little body was shivering and shaking and she wasn’t doing so well, she ended up having a high fever but it just hadn’t come on yet. Aren’t our bodies amazing? I definitely find that I go to the worst place in my head and think the worst case scenario, but really it was just her body trying to warm up to bring on the fever to fight whatever infection was going on. I think Dan and I have been a bit traumatized by her first really bad fever happening when she was so tiny and we had to take her to emergency and she needed antibiotics. So it’s hard not to go to the place of thinking something is wrong, and being scared, but really it’s normal. Can you tell we’re first-time parents? Haha.

That being said, her safety, is my number one priority! Living in a busy city with obvious concerns and day to day worries, learning about the things that are preventable brings a huge amount of relief to me. There are day to day things we teach her like holding our hand every time she comes up to a street, not running up to random dogs and of course not to put the food she finds on the sidewalks of East Vancouver into her mouth (lol). There are things in our home too like not playing with plugs, or touching the stove, keeping her safe and preventing injuries I would say is common knowledge, but there are a lot of things in our homes that may not be!

I’ll be honest and say learning about CO poisoning isn’t something that has crossed my mind more than a few times. We have a gas stove and it’s something I’ve worried about before but haven’t researched. Did you know that you can’t only rely on CO detectors? You should book annual inspections with a qualified contractor for the maintenance of your gas appliances. CO poisoning injuries are serious, and they can happen, but they’re totally preventable.

Carbon Monoxide is a colourless odorless and tasteless gas that blocks your body’s ability to absorb oxygen. Symptoms of a low concentration of it are similar to the flu - nausea, headaches and fatigue. Higher concentrations they are a lot more extreme. Annual inspections are something I’m adding to the top of my priority list, because my girls’ safety, all of our safety is just not worth playing with, it’s worth it for the peace of mind. You can learn more by visiting Fortis BC and The Community Against Preventable injuries.

Our favourite day off activity together is baking, it takes a bit of extra patience, because letting her add all of the ingredients, and be my little mixer can take a long time, but it’s so fun, she just loves it.